La Amortajada
by Sra. Allerdyce
Summary: The musings of a Southern Belle.


Soon it would grow dark ; in the same way as the night had already fallen in your life. You watched, standing, all who came to see you. Tears and sobs; all felt the abrupt goodbye and you looked at them. Oh, yes! They came for the last time to admire you sleep in silence, the white splendor of those fine fabrics on which they placed you, the black dress making your skin shine like the purest alabaster. The small and delicate hands crossed on your chest, in the open, for all to see for the first time. Those hands that he had seen. Would he come ?

You returned to watch yourself, all that smooth chocolate mass sorrounding you, reaching your waist. The same one that had suffocated and felt heavy when the fever did not want to leave you. That had, little by little, ended you, in the painful slowness of someone who knows it, wishing once again, one more time to see him and allow yourself to leave peacefully. To say good bye to him and to let him know that you were leaving with him in your soul and in your heart. Your encounters always were so sporadic... weeks, months without seeing each other. You never found the courage to tell him, to unearth the secret that weighed you down. And you waited with the hope that now you could say it to him... Days of agony, days of expectancy but he never arrived.

Suddenly, a murmur, the commotion and the protests...

_He_ was here.

He had come to see you. He disregarded the ill-disposed protests, the whispers, the judging glances. He watched you in silence, his eyes shining with fire. He seemed to raise his hand to touch your cold cheek, that stare hardly containing the pain to see you there... But he tensed, hardening all his body and stopped his hand in midair. It trembled almost imperceptibly, only your eyes witnessing the tremor.

You desperately wished to reach him, touch him. He had given you the nothing of his lost hour and in return you had given him the truthful note of your life. You had given him heart felt emotions, the restlessness of your soul, disrupting his emptiness, his immortal lies and his numb, arrogant rustles in his soul.

You, in the silence, tied down to a feeling without borders, that linked you and divided you from him. You, trying to reach him in every barren scream...

The memories come to flood you, tearing you apart fom limb to limb.

You remember...

- I remember you.

I remember you, young, haughty, cold and hard. Your clear pupil, your thin and high strung frame. I hated you.  
I see you, following me, torturing me with your unforgiving tongue. You were cruel; you were soulless.

Until one day. That day remains tattoed to my soul, branded for all eternity.

I was attempting to ignore your ill-treatment, your mockery that cut me like a sharp knife driving into my soul. I never understood my strange behavior; I would stay beside you enduring whichever was the whim of the moment or the mood you were in. Just as sudden, silence. I raised my eyes from the book I was reading. Sleeping; it was difficult for me to grasp. You have fallen asleep beside me. And me, I just stared at you.

Childlike; chiseled features softened by sleep. You appeared before my eyes frail-like. I stopped breathing; your head came resting in my arm. My eyes glued on you, overwhelmed by what I was witnessing. I never knew why the abandonment of your gesture awoke a singular tenderness inside me and why your heat was so sweet to me.

Since then, I understood your brusque conduct. The fog has lifted before my eyes. You had made yourself my personal tormentor because you were angry at me. I had chosen Bobby over you.

Silly me. -

Soon thereafter...

The months between you and him; the terrible pain that can enslave you to another soul despite the distance. Both of you were irrevocably on oppossite extremes. You were supposed to be part of the good side and he, the bad side. But, who is to say what is wrong or right?

The cure. Your biggest mistake... or was it?

Again, the memories that seemed to burn days, minutes, seconds...

-It was Fall and it rained without respite.

One evening, the sky covered itself in lead and it broke down in shreds, the livid brilliance ran from north to south.

I was standing outside, staring at nature's beauty, reckless enough to face its fury. Strong arm around my waist, suddenly snatched away from the floor.

It was you. I didn't need to see your face. It felt good, deliciuosly wicked, the pressure of that arm that kept me firm in its embrace. I did it for you and somehow, I sensed that you knew. The wind twisted the trees. I turned around and saw your face strangely cutting against the gray clouds. Your hair had changed. My hair flapped around us, coiling on your neck.

We were plunged into darkness and silence. But all my senses were centered on you and your arm. A rough hand ran down my face and I closed my eyes. Feeling you for the first time. You could have taken me anywhere as long as that arm held me, pulling me against your body.

Do you remember? I approached my body towards yours. I whispered in a moan, "Don't leave me."

"Never." Was your hoarse answer.

That night, as drops of water slipped down our naked bodies, we made love, once, twice. Our frenzy was witnessed only by the eyes of nature. -

In one scream without tears; in a groan, from deep within, the longing grew. And you saying, "Stay with me." and he answering, "Always."  
And yet, weren't promises meant to be broken?


End file.
